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RNC Day 4

After two days of increasingly rousing rhetoric and slickly delivered attacks on the Democratic ticket, the RNC ended on a note that seemed almost tired and depressed. The off-key impression, made by the candidate himself, John McCain, was surprising in its contrast to the conservatism-on-steroids that the rest of the RNC put on display. His speech seemed oddly flat in both tone and substance.

The entire night had a sleepwalking quality to it, filling in portions of the program that had been previously left out of the hodgepodge re-scheduling due to Hurricane Gustav without building the conclusion of their case for the candidate.

Tom Ridge led the primetime festivities with a speech I wanted to like. There’s something appealing about Ridge; he’s like a guy from the local hardware store who you can trust to find the right bolt to hold cement and who’ll tell an anecdote to make you feel better about not knowing which one to use yourself. In fact, his anecdote in the speech about finding John McCain in his office during one of the low points of the nomination campaign, illustrating his friend’s ability to tough out the hard times had a likeable quality. But his entire speech felt like that same guy from the hardware store delivered it, forced into a prepared speech on teleprompter instead of a short chat—very stiff.

The video on Sarah Palin, originally prepared for Day 3 but cut because Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t keep his speech to the agreed length, seemed oddly out of place after her night was over. And Cindy McCain’s family tableau, while pleasant and lovely in an Inaugural Ball sort of way, attired in a silk blue dress that must have cost as much as the entire annual budget of the town of Wasilla, AK, seemed somewhat off-speed for a convention windup.

The film about John McCain appropriately highlighted the candidate’s remarkable war biography; bringing to life a young man who one almost expected to see strutting onto the stage by the film’s end, ready to fight back against torture with a witty one-liner about his keepers. But then the real McCain, a man who’s not a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, but of the last eight years of right wing policies, took to the real stage, in front of a green background that highlighted a sickly complexion and a stiff composure.

The speech itself had few strains of the maverick the RNC had been preparing viewers for. It was more of a laundry list of what the candidate would do than an inspirational description of what all of the points amounted to. He started genially enough, thanking one and all around him, almost in wonder that he’d finally achieved the Republican nomination in spite of the fates and the Bushes.

The next portion of the speech, in which he talked about the kind of debate he planned to engage in with Senator Obama— and the way his running mate Sarah Palin would help him to buck the expectations of any who think it’ll be about yelling at the other side, could have led to a more inspiring call to the future. Instead, it began a litany of all the things he’s fought against over the years, including the corruption of the Republican Party as it fell prey to the lure of pork barrel spending and lobbyists’ cash.

McCain soon segued into Iraq, values, and reducing government spending (even, oddly enough, on unemployment support checks). He spent time on charter schools and on foreign aid, two areas not generally considered central to his campaign. In all this, his delivery began to bog down with the weight of the speech’s density.

He found better footing when moving on to foreign policy and his theme of experience and preparation for the Commander-in-Chief’s role. His line about the threats facing the United States, that, “I’m not afraid of them. I’m prepared for them,” brought the delegates to their feet.

His discussion of his family’s history of service during World Wars and his own dislike of what he saw happen to comrades in Vietnam led quickly to another good moment about his ability to keep the country strong, but out of conflict when possible. After that, when he went on to say that he bears scars from conflict, but that Senator Obama does not, he seemed to step over the line into self-involvement, before stepping back into the best part of the speech, now almost forty five minutes in.

His Vietnam story, as much as we’d all heard it, was his strongest section. The acknowledgement that he’d found his love of something bigger than himself: his country, not in being personally strong, but in being broken under torture, was a really personal and authentic moment of connection with viewers and the delegates. It led to a rousing finish, with McCain urging Americans to be involved in their country, each in their own way— and to fight with him to push for a better America.

Unfortunately, most viewers would probably be asleep or otherwise engaged by the time McCain got to this conclusion, finally finding energy in a speech that had few rallying moments to precede its good end.

In summary, it was a lackluster night, just when the RNC needed more drama to bring the candidate into the fall campaign.